My left hand tells only the truth, my right only lies. I am right-handed, but honest, which presents difficulties. My grocery list scrambles over the page in awkward letters; my “dear john” notes are crisp across the paper.
My stories—I type them. They are both lies and truth, as all good mythology should be. They are true somewhere, or could be true, or they are part of a deeper version of the truth by which all lives are governed.
Still, they lie. They are not about real people and real things but are ephemeral, as non-existent as the wind and honor and “the greater good.”
My left hand is scarred and scabbed and burnt. I have bitten the nails down to the quick, and there is dirt ingrained in my knuckles. My right hand is beautiful, but its nails are also broken. I break my teeth on the lies and the truth squeaks uncomfortably against my tongue.
Cover my eyes with the left and my mouth with the right. Worse, cover my mouth with both hands and see what I say. Then I spout prophecy in a salamander’s voice, my words twisted until they do not know which path to walk.
(Only a moment ago, I cradled my forehead in both.)
There is a comma in my throat and I sleep in parentheses. All my thoughts are birds and I am afraid; I think I may be going crazy and I want to cast my boyfriend away.
Right hand: I love him.
Left hand: I love him.
What I want to know is a question my oracular appendages cannot answer—am I correct, or am I ungrateful? Will I sever our connection and never find another?
I have held his hand with both my right and my left.
Clasping my hands together, I stare at the empty sky and wish we lived on different moons.
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